Personal Entry: 1

Due to the fact that I have grown up and lived in a small hotel owned by my parents, I have always had to be part of my parents’ trying to market their hotel as well as restaurant experience in the most efficient way. As I was the youngest family member and the only one that almost fully grew up with the new benefits that came along with the internet, I became thoroughly aware of the changes of the hotel’s marketing through social media.

As my parents’ hotel is located in a small town in the countryside of Germany, technology had not always been as revolutionary in every household, as it may have been in huge cities at the same time. Newspapers remained the most efficient way of advertising for an unnecessarily long time and only around 2006, the local newspapers of my hometown started becoming more and more present on the internet. Newspaper advertisements slowly became online advertisements and local newspapers had a full second presence online. The local newspapers have actually changed so much until now, that I recently got contacted by the editor of one of my hometown’s local newspapers, who wanted to write an article about my educational path in the US. He sent me a message through Wer Kennt Wen, a German alternative to Facebook. He also told me to join his group on that website, which focused on people from my hometown living in other places of the world.

The changes in the local newspaper industry were soon extremely noticeable to my parents and their business. Announcing their hotel in the local newspapers was no longer efficient, and even though the hotel did have a website and a pay-per-click Google link by that time, my parents soon realized that other forms of social media marketing would soon be necessary.

The most significant way to advertise the hotel now, is probably booking.com. It is a partner company of priceline.com and focuses on hotels only. Nowadays, most of my parents’ bookings are a result of booking.com. Customers reviews and ratings are a very helpful tool of this website and because the website guarantees the best price, it has a large following of people.

Of course, booking.com will not remain the only website that is significant to my parents’ business, but it will remain one of the first ones. My mother has actually recently gotten a Facebook account because a Danish bus vacation service has decided to use Facebook as the main communication tool for the hotels that they send their guests to.

A YouTube account for the hotel is also in progress, as videos of celebrations such as the ones during Christmas and New Years time, often speak more than any written text could.

While my mom has asked me whether or not I find a Twitter account for the hotel necessary, I don’t think it is, just because Twitter is something well-known but not excessively used in Germany. Due to the fact that the hotel is rather small, the amount of followers would definitely be limited. Who knows though, maybe in another year or two, even the smallest countryside hotels will find it necessary to post “tweets”.